Back to Pam & Meg’s

Goatmulched on December 12, 2010.

While gnawing gibbously on the Earth’s gabbroic layer this Monday, I had a most ytterbious revelation: It’s been a very, very long time (or, as my grandpooty used to say, “a very, very long time”) since I had visited my favorite eigencafé, Pam & Meg’s! And I was in luck: It was still located at the end of Bouillabaisse Boulevard, right where I’d left it! I resolved at once that I would pay Pam & Meg’s a visit the very next day for blunch—or die trying.

So, when Tuesday rolled around until it was dizzy and fell over, I put on my best isosceles valise and bolo tie, grabbed my leisure suit, and darted out the door faster than a snail darter on meth. Blunch would be mine! All mine, all mine! At… Pam & Meg’s!

I was a full mile down the road before I made a most embarrassing discovery: It seemed I had transposed two of my never-leave-home-without-them items, resulting in my leisure suit being absolutely ruined (dirty and tattered, a result of being carried in hand rather than worn about my goaty frame), my isosceles valise being mounted atop my pointy head like a hat, and an acute bout of nakedness which my neighbors most certainly did not appreciate. As quickly as I made this discovery, I dropped everything and scootled back home, my face redder than a pepperoni tree in full bloom.

Donning my next best suit—a zoot suit made by Rebo & Zooty themselves—I once again set out on my long (or, as my grandpooty used to say, “actually sort of short”) journey to Pam & Meg’s, the best eigencafé this side of the Shemhamphorasch. In fact, it’s the best eigencafé this side of anywhere—even one of those many-sided polygons that visit me in my sleep and terrorize me into plotting the demise of my entire planet, galaxy, and clown nose. It’s the best eigencafé anywhere—and you can take that to the bank and smoke it!

Arriving at Pam & Meg’s, I immediately hooted for Pam—or Meg—to come over and seat me at once: And not just seat me, but wait on me hand and foot like the big spoiled baby that I am! Pam was more than happy to offer Meg for the job, and Meg was so overjoyed to see me that she immediately stormed into the kitchen—no doubt in order to order her cooks to prepare the biggest, best batch of golden cornpone stew they had ever made—and refused to come out. And I hadn’t even ordered yet!

After waiting several minutes for Meg to come back out and seat me, I decided to do it myself. I bumbled my way into the dining area like a goat spelunking for higher office and plopped myself down at an empty table smack-dab in the middle of the restaurant. The place was packed; I not only had to knock seven customers out of my way merely to get to the table, but I was even required to manhandle a party of five away from the table itself before I could safely declare it “empty” and occupy it myself.

Planting my flag squarely atop the napkin dispenser, I started flailing my arms wildly over my head and honking out orders: “Pam! I need a menu! Meg! What are today’s specials?! Is shit-on-a-shingle still on the menu? Are you still serving jellied gree-worms? What about flobcumber—insidious or unctuous? And what about that batch of cornpone stew? You better not confuse it with porncone stew this time, or I’ll firebomb your eigencafé and salt the soil so nothing will ever grow here again!” At that point, my barked orders descended into unintelligible shrieking, babbling, and literal barking, for even though my brain had concluded issuing its orders to my larynx, my larynx wasn’t yet in the mood to fall silent.

By this point, most of the customers in the place had fallen silent themselves, the ones still remaining in the place staring intently at me, transfixed. “What’s your problem?!” I shouted at the one closest to me. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of propane. I responded smugly: “Well, if you must know, my e-penis is quite big today!” An old woman two tables away gasped. I continued: “Wellity, wellity, wellity! What have we here? Is someone afraid of the ol’ e-penis, you ugly old bag of mostly water?” Off in the distance, a dog repeated a hackneyed cliché. Closer by, another customer gasped, cursed, got up, burped, meeped, paid for his order, left a tip, used the restroom, burped again, and left.

“Phillip! What on Earth are you—!?” Meg suddenly called out to me. I honked back an answer. Suddenly solid aluminum ducats started raining from the sky: An ominous sign if there ever was one. Clearly, discussions of my e-penis would have to wait for later.

“Did you know that the orchid dupe wasp ejaculates visible amounts of semen as it tries to copulate with flowers of the leafless-, large-, and tartan-tongue orchids, which it mistakes for a female wasp?” I asked Meg after she made her way to my table. “It’s true—Wikipedia told me so, and the free encyclopedia that even a schizophrenic donkey can edit is never, never wrong!”

Meg just stared at me, rolling her eyes and clenching and unclenching her toes in her delightful pink sandals. I was crestfallen at her mediocre response to my vomiting forth a random factoid from Wikipedia. It was as if a Cardassian neck trick had gone horribly wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong… like corn gone wrong.

I bolted from my seat, predictably overturning the table. Springing upward madly, I clutched hold of the ceiling fan, riding it as it spun a few revolutions, and then let go, landing on another customer’s table (which I also duly overturned). This whole day was turning out even weirder than that hot lesbian scene with Seska and B’Ellana Torres that I’d seen on TV years ago, and there was nothing I could do about it: Not even Iggy Kalamazoo-Kintaki-Meeps, the captain of the Magic Oreo Machine™, or even the Sacred Spudbucket of the Universe could help set things straight this time. Only one thing to do: Go on a murderous goatmulching exped—

—And then my food arrived: A bowl of golden cornpone stew, lightly tasered, with a side of baconpenis and a glass of watermelon juice. I looked around. Nothing was amiss: Not even Pam’s crimson flip-flops or Meg’s pink sandals. Apparently I had had another out-of-gourd experience. My face reddened in embarrassment, humiliation, and underdunkery again; this was worse even than that time I had insisted on using a semicolon where a period would have sufficed.

“My Lord, Meg, do you know what just happened?!” I asked in abject horror. Meg shook her nose. “I… I used a… semicolon where a period would have sufficed.” Meg was nonplussed, bemused, and other words most of you don’t know the real meanings of. “A period! Do you hear that, Meg? A period!”

Meg patted me on the head like I was only six years old and had just learned the alphabet. I responded by merely playing with my food by jamming a comb in it and pretending it was on fire. Meg grinned patronizingly: No, it was as if I was only five years old, or maybe even four. Meg smiled again, turned 360°, and moonwalked back into the kitchen.

I finished my blunch sullenly, heartbroken that Meg clearly disapproved of my entire existence. What would I do? What could I do?! Then it came to me: “Meg!” I shouted at the top of my clavicle. “I demand dessert! Bring me desserts! All of them!” Such decisive action had to have a positive impact on Meg, didn’t it?

Dessert arrived, impacting my skull on the left temple and causing me to fall out of my chair and land in a constipated heap on the floor. Meg flung another dessert at me, then another: Cheese dessert, followed by fneese dessert, followed by a fnordious flobcumber pie (with quipped cream). And then suddenly it was clear to me: Pam & Meg’s had been conquered by a master fnordwright, and only I could save it. (Well, me, or perhaps MacGyver: But where would I find a paperclip, elastic band, and donkey wrench at this hour? All I seemed to have was: A superfluous amount of colons.)

“Fnords! Horrible, hairy, hoary, hideous fnords! I see you all!!” I howled, repeating myself until I was hoarse [citation needed]. “You’ll rue the day you conquered Pam & Meg’s!” I leapt up onto my chair, then onto the table, waiving the napkin dispenser and other restaurantly trinkets above my head. Salt and pepper sprayed everywhere; napkins fluttered to the floor like parachuting gnomish shock troops invading my tiny little town once again.